This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.Daily Maverick reports that US tariffs are dealing a heavy blow to SA jobs, but the country’s factories and fishing fleets were already on their knees after years of ANC policy and governance failures that led to power cuts, collapsing railways and the deindustrialisation of the economy.
SA is in the grip of a jobs crisis so deep that economists have begun calling it a “polycrisis”. In the second quarter of 2025, the official unemployment rate climbed to 33.2%, with 8.4 million people out of work. Youth unemployment (ages 25 to 34) was a staggering 40.5%. The Reserve Bank has warned that between 30,000 and 100,000 jobs are at immediate risk from the US tariffs alone, with losses concentrated among low-skilled agricultural workers and formal sector. The Department of Employment and Labour has admitted the tariffs have “made matters worse”.
Crucially, not all the pain is imported. Many of the biggest retrenchments in 2025, at ArcelorMittal SA (Amsa) and Glencore, stem from failures at home, namely unreliable energy, collapsing railways and inconsistent industrial policy. The tariffs have simply exposed how vulnerable SA has already become. Daily Maverick goes on to detail the situation in the fishing, steel and vehicle manufacturing sectors. Trade union Numsa is pushing for a harder line: higher tariffs on imported cars, tyres and steel; stricter local content requirements; and the reconnection of coal power stations to stabilise Eskom. But these interventions won’t undo decades of underinvestment and mismanagement by the SA government.
It is said that unless the GNU confronts its structural failures head-on by fixing Eskom, rebuilding Transnet and crafting a coherent industrial strategy, more towns like Newcastle and East London will face collapse.
- Read the full original of the in-depth report in the above regard by Lindsey Schutters at Daily Maverick
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